Stephen King’s It Is Coming To Theaters September 8

Despite its iconic popularity as one of Stephen King’s most well-known novels, It has never been made into a movie. This is because it was made into a TV miniseries instead, and the miniseries proved popular enough, leading to a rash of subpar King sweeps events like “The Langoliers.”

Though a lot of people love Tim Curry’s campy performance as Pennywise the Clown, there’s potential in a more menacing take that has yet to be realized. It is one instance where a remake could work, if it was done right. Now it’s happening, and here’s the first full trailer:

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Observations: We’re still getting some of the most well-known symbols of Pennywise’s presence like red balloons — and a kid in a yellow raincoat talking to a sharp-toothed clown in a sewer. We don’t get to hear Pennywise ramble about things “floating” in this trailer, but the kid (“Georgie”) sure does. Instead of the “bwammmmmp” noise we’ve grown accustomed to hearing, it’s a clip of an insane Georgie screeching “YOU’LL FLOAT TOO” over and over with increased distortion. It’s effective…the jump scares less so.

We still don’t have enough information to determine if this is an improvement over the TV version or if it’s another weak jump-scare-heavy dud. We’ll see, I suppose. It creeps into theaters September 8.